Unfortunately, dogs are not allowed in this Reserve. It is a painful decision, but necessary for wildlife to be protected, and this is part of the main objectives of La Malcontenta e il Lupo.

Here are the reasons, taken from the Gran Paradiso National Park website:

“Why am I not able to bring my dog to the Park?

Dogs cannot circulate freely in the Park because they could run into the wildlife that can undergo a lot of stress directly if directly attacked by the animal or indirectly.

The main reason for this limitation is that our dogs are carriers of many diseases dangerous for wildlife, some of these are zoonoses, animals' diseases that can infect humans.

The weakest target of these diseases, mostly infectious-viral origin, are wild carnivores, from mustelids to canines. This means that a domestic dog, even raised in an apartment, can be a vehicle of infections potentially causing mortality in badgers, ermines, martens, foxes and wolves. And this happens even if the dogs are vaccinated, since some recent scientific studies have shown the passage of vaccine viruses, alive even if attenuated, from the domestic animal to the small mustelids.

The most dangerous of these diseases, the canine distemper, widespread in our dogs, even causes of local extinction of some protected carnivores species in many parts of the world, including felids, like lynxes and leopards, as well as wolves.

These are the reasons, related to the health of many, large and small, inhabitants of the mountain that draw huge benefits not only from protection but also from the implementation and respect of these simple prohibitions.”